Software & Computers

Adobe's Photoshop is unarguably the most popular photo editor in use today, although not everyone needs its myriad of features or is willing to spend the money to get them. There are options out there, among them Ulead's PhotoImpact 12. It's a feature-packed photo editor that may well offer you both the power and efficiency that you need, and do so at a very...

In a world of oversaturated color, I’m always surprised at the popularity of black and white images. There is something magical about a well-crafted image in monochrome that is more expressive than any color image could ever be. In fact, it was black and white that first interested me in photography. So, with digital photography, I’ve often done black and white conversions with a...

Compatible with both Mac and Windows, Corel's new Painter X can transform your portrait, landscape, and still life photos into images that emulate oil paint on canvas, charcoal on textured art paper, woodcut, silkscreen, watercolor, pastel, pencil drawing, mosaic tile, and scores of other natural art media. You can start by enlisting Version X's enhanced automatic...

About 31/2 years ago something happened that was destined to change my view of filters forever. I was talking shop with an old buddy who happens to be a veteran professional photographer and a bona fide digital guru. In the course of our brief conversation I mentioned that I was using optical filters--namely a graduated ND and a circular polarizer--for a D-SLR project I...

When Pantone introduced huey about a year ago, the device was noteworthy for a couple of reasons. The first was the price. At well under $100, it was clearly targeted to the more casual user than previous offerings had been. The huey was also one of the easiest calibration devices to use, and the only one that supported automatic adjustments for ambient light changes....

Setting your images to music and adding transitions has always been a popular way to share digital photos, and with the latest crop of software, the options are better and easier than ever. You have the options included with your operating system--iPhoto for Mac users and Photo Story for Windows users. Both can create basic slide shows from your images, along with music...

There was no lack of gadgetry at this year's PMA, especially when it came to portable data and picture storage and display. The themes and variations boggle the mind, making it increasingly difficult to choose one product over another--especially when products from one company show an uncanny resemblance to those from another. However, many products distinguish...

It's not just hardware but software that's fueling the digital imaging revolution. Even the firmware inside cameras and printers is really software that tells the device what to do and how to do it. Adobe's Photoshop, which has become a virtual economy unto itself, generating its own trade shows, software add-ons, and an entire book industry has gotten so...

Now that most enthusiast-level cameras are boasting resolution of at least 8 megapixels, memory card speed and storage capacity have become particularly important. When shooting in raw capture or ultrahigh JPEG size/quality, there's definitely a benefit to using the fastest/largest memory card. The extra speed is also ideal after a long trip, when uploading hundreds (or...

If this year's announcements at PMA are any indication, color management is coming to the masses in a big way. New products, lower prices, and ease of use are all coming together to make this once arcane and neglected area more available to everyone, from seasoned pro to casual digital photographer.

Since it was first begun as project "Longhorn" in 2005, a lot of experts, gurus, and techno-pundits, as well as Microsoft official representatives, have written reams about Vista. But until its release in mid-February, no one in digital photography or color management has had a word to say publicly about how Windows Vista will impact digital photography with a PC...

When a photo product is designated as "professional" by the manufacturer many serious photo enthusiasts are immediately attracted, assuming the product will provide superior performance for them as well as professional photographers. This assumption has for much of photography's recent history been a truism backed up by reality. However, Adobe's reference...

Since back in the days when a 3-megapixel camera was as good as it got, making big ones out of little ones has been a goal of digital photographers. Along the way this desire to create big prints from small files led to the...

Depending on which metaphor you like best, it's either the 800-pound gorilla in the pixel palace or the fly in the digital ointment. It's also, according to professional photographer Mark Gamba, "the thing no one is talking about."

It has been about a year since I first tried Apple's Aperture, reported on in the May 2006 issue of Shutterbug (available at www.shutterbug.com; type Aperture into the Search box). Since, Aperture has been updated via automatic upgrades from Apple. The Apple Aperture application for professional photographers as I described in my report was the first of its kind devoted...